


After the fire (the fire still burns)

by minkhollow



Category: Persona 3
Genre: Gen, Grief/Mourning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-04
Updated: 2017-11-04
Packaged: 2019-01-29 07:40:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,580
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12626304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minkhollow/pseuds/minkhollow
Summary: Shinji wasn't expecting to come back to the dorm at all, but he has, and one very important person is missing.





	After the fire (the fire still burns)

**Author's Note:**

> I have a bit of a Thing for 'what is grief can I eat it' storylines, and Shinji would've had a hell of a time adjusting to things after waking up, and so here we are.
> 
> (It didn't seem worth tagging for a barely-there mention, but this is written as though Shinji had a crush on Minako but she never pressed the matter.)

It's past noon when Shinji gets back to the dorm.

It's graduation day - not that they'd have been likely to let him walk regardless, but part of Shinji feels a little bad for not turning up for Aki and Mitsuru's sakes. But he's only been up for two hours or so and he's already fucking exhausted. Everyone will get back to the dorm sooner or later, and that's good enough for him.

At least he's finally shaken off some of the fuzziness that's been plaguing him since he woke up the other week. Any other time he might've chalked it up to having been in a goddamn coma, but even the doctors kept pausing, like there was something else they were supposed to be checking about him but they couldn't remember what. He knows what it was _now_ , at least, and Mitsuru's liable to drag him back to the hospital now that the folks who know Persona shit can actually tell him what's up with that. They hadn't wanted to let him go today, but he insisted.

He's kind of wondering why, at the moment, but that's more because he could sleep all afternoon and he'd probably still be wiped. Sooner or later the group'll come back, including Minako, and that's the real reason he insisted. But that's later; for now, he flops in a chair, turns the cooking channel on, and the next thing he knows it's early evening and there's a wet dog nose pressing into his hand.

"Hey, Koro-chan." Even with that rude awakening, Shinji can't help but smile. "Where’s everybody else?"

Koro-chan whines, then turns his head toward the kitchen. Someone's cooking, and for once it doesn't smell like a disaster waiting to happen. As far as Shinji knows, there's only one other person in the dorm who _can_ cook.

"Oh, so that's where she's hiding? Guess I better go investigate." He hauls himself up out of the chair, scratches Koro-chan's head as he starts toward the dining room - and stops dead in the doorway to the kitchen.

" _Fuuka_?"

Fuuka squeaks and spins around, nearly dropping the spatula in her hand. "Oh! Shinjiro-senpai, I'm so sorry, I didn't wake you up, did I? We all thought you could use the rest, and everyone's a bit discombobulated, but I thought... well, someone needed to make dinner."

"...This actually smells good. When's the other shoe drop?" He can see a few mistakes in what Fuuka's laid out; the food's not going to be any kind of award-winning dish, but she's on track to make something edible, and he doesn't see any base ingredients that are blatantly out of place.

"I've been practicing, since... since you taught me. I realised maybe I should pay as much attention to recipes as I do to technical manuals, if I ever wanted to improve."

"At least something sank in. Where's Minako? Figured she'd be the one in here."

Fuuka's expression, which already seemed more like brittle cheer than her usual back in September, completely crumbles. "Right. You were still asleep when we came back. Minako-chan - she collapsed on the school roof this morning. Mitsuru-senpai and Yukari-chan took her to the hospital, but... it doesn't look good."

Shinji barely hears any of that past 'collapsed.' That's not possible, she was perfectly healthy other than that cold from the typhoon. More to the point, it's not _right_. He'd made his peace with death and was frankly surprised to be in a position to wake up at all (Mitsuru had his coat cleaned and repaired, but even she couldn't find anyone who could pry a bullet out of a watch).

Minako... she shouldn't be gone. She shouldn't be anywhere close to it. She had so much left to give the world. Why this?

Instead of asking, he moves over to the counter, almost on autopilot. Even if Fuuka doesn't need help - and before the end of the meal, he's sure she will, with something or other - Koro-chan needs his dinner too, and with a friend down possibly for good, he deserves a nice meal, not that canned crap.

Fuuka calls everyone down for dinner, when she's done cooking - surprisingly, Shinji only needed to step in the once, and it all smells good and looks edible. Whatever the hell she worked out for herself, at least she's not wasting food anymore. He almost asks, but she looks as mournful as everyone else, and that's enough to tell him.

_("She started the cooking club back in June, actually. Well, if you can call it a club when it's only been the two of us the whole time. I had to rescue a batch of sugar cookies from her once...")_

After dinner, he trudges up to his room, as barren as it was in September. The box he'd left on the desk with his equipment is empty, other than his Evoker; looks like Minako got that message, at least.

With a heavy sigh, Shinji flops onto his bed, staring at the ceiling. Outliving Minako was never the plan; hell, making it out of October alive wasn't the plan.

What's he supposed to do now?

***

Exhausted as he is, Shinji can't quite make himself go to sleep, and he's willing to bet he's not the only one. It feels like the whole dorm is holding its breath until midnight - what if they're wrong, what if it's somehow not over after all, what do they do if Minako's not there to help them through it...

But midnight comes and goes without incident, and he's sure Aigis would tell them if the Dark Hour showed up and they'd somehow all lost the ability to stay conscious for it. That's something, at least. Whatever Minako did, she decided the benefits were worth the cost, and he can't blame her for that.

Not when he was running the same figures for the last two years and reached the same conclusion.

He still can't sleep, and while he doesn't have enough energy to cook when he gets there, he'd rather be downstairs right now. There's already a light on in the kitchen; turns out it's Junpei, putting a round of dinner dishes away.

He's stacking them a lot more neatly than Shinji would've thought he'd bother to, but then again, a haphazard stack of bowls is probably way more of a reminder of Tartarus than any of them will want to see any time soon.

Junpei jumps a little when he turns around and sees Shinji, but recovers pretty fast. "Oh, hey, senpai. You need something?"

Shinji shakes his head. "Couldn't sleep, that's all."

"I know the feeling. It still kinda feels like we should be waiting for something, doesn't it?" Instead of waiting for an answer, Junpei sighs and keeps going. "I keep hopin' she'll get better, pull through somehow, but Yuka-tan called earlier and said it really doesn't look good. And I just - first Chidori, now one of the best friends I've ever had? When's the Dark Hour gonna stop _taking_ shit from us?"

Shinji can't say he's ever been all that fond of Junpei. Junpei's kind of an idiot and lets his need to be the hero run away with him until he's neck-deep in trouble, and whether it's a front or not, his class-clown tendencies just plain rub Shinji the wrong way. But right now, at least, they're united in grief.

_("And then - it was like a light bulb went off over Junpei's head, he grabs Kenji by the collar and goes 'Wait, did YOU take those photos?!' Of course, he realised almost right away that Kenji's way too obsessed with older women to bother taking stalkery photos of his classmates, but...")_

It's shitty common ground, but it's what they've got, and that's when Shinji's brain catches up to the rest of what Junpei said. "Wait, what happened to Chidori?"

Junpei looks away, clearly trying to pretend he's not crying. "Takaya's revolver happened to her. Well, happened to me, but she... and he had the gall to call it _meaningless_."

"'course he did. He only understood actions that profit the person who took 'em. But it meant something to her, or she never woulda gone to that trouble. Wasn't her style."

"No. It wasn't." Junpei grabs another stack of dishes and leaves it at that for a while, not speaking again until he's emptied the drying rack. "Did you know?"

"Know what?"

"That Strega was a Kirijo project originally. I mean, you knew what pills to give Chidori."

Shinji sighs. "Wasn't that hard to work out, once I heard how they got their Personas. Jin and Chidori weren't too bad on their own - they never named names, but they didn't really have to. It... Mitsuru would've just been upset by it, and she had enough to be upset about."

"Too bad the only person they had to fall back on for so long was Takaya, huh."

"Yeah. Yeah, it was."

Junpei starts filling the sink with soapy water, and Shinji leaves him to it, plopping down on a couch in the lounge with every intention of dozing off to the cooking channel again. Koro-chan comes and drapes himself across Shinji's lap.

_("Honestly, I'm surprised finding out we had a dog on the team didn't get you back here sooner.")_

"He's right, Koro-chan. It ain't fair." But the Dark Hour can't take anything from them again - not anymore.

***

The next thing he knows, the morning sun's in his face, the TV's off, and Ken's hovering in the lounge. He looks nervous, which as far as Shinji's ever been able to tell is the kid's default state - and a lot better mood for a ten-year-old than homicidal rage, regardless.

_("I'm still not sure what Ken-kun's deal is. It's like he's afraid to let anyone in - or to let himself be ten, for that matter. He absolutely loved the Amoebaman movie marathon. I wish he'd let himself relax like that more often.")_

Shinji can't say he's been looking forward to this conversation, not since he remembered the full details of what happened and had more to go on than 'got shot protecting some kid,' but it's not like they can avoid it forever. "You okay, kid?"

"As much as any of us can say we are. I... I'm tired of losing people."

"I'm sorry." Nothing Ken could have done would've been worse than what Shinji had already done to himself - he didn't need the suppressants, but he was too scared it'd happen again and couldn't take the chance he'd hurt someone else. But maybe the apology will help, a little.

"I think I understand, now." That's something no kid should be saying about death, but it's not like Ken didn't earn the knowledge the very, very hard way. "And I don't want to waste what you and Mom gave me. I can't say it's okay and I don't think you'd want me to, but... I think it can be in the past."

It's not forgiveness, but Shinji wasn't expecting forgiveness. It's an agreement to find a way to live with each other, and it sounds like Ken learned a lot from October, and really, that's all he can ask. "Yeah, okay. You got school today?"

Ken nods. "Last day. The TV was still on, so..."

"Thanks, kid. Get going, you're gonna be late."

Ken gives him a fleeting smile as he scrambles for the door, and Shinji hauls himself out of the chair to see if he can figure something out for breakfast, while he's up. No one else is going to have school today - graduation day's the end of the year, since making everyone else show up once the seniors are out the door would be stupid - but people aren't likely to be out of the early-morning habit yet. If nothing else, Aki's probably out on a jog or something.

Besides, with one of their own down for the count...

He's halfway through making enough pancakes for six people when the front door opens and Yukari calls out a _very_ tired-sounding "'m home. Is anybody awake?"

"Get your ass in here and have some breakfast," Shinji says, and to her credit, Yukari does. She looks as bushed as she sounded; most days he's pretty sure she'd only let people see that big of bags under her eyes if she had archery practice and there was no point in putting on makeup first.

_("And poor Yukari was the first to notice Aigis wasn't where she was supposed to be, so she got to start her morning trying to convince a robot the floor isn't an appropriate place to store live ammo...")_

Still, she manages a passable smile before grabbing a plate. "Welcome back, senpai. Thanks for the food."

"Somebody's gotta do it."

"And you say you're not kind." The conversation dies out there; Yukari's busy stuffing her face and Shinji doesn't know what else to say. Even if he'd wanted to get closer to the rest of the dorm before, Yukari's nearly as good at putting up walls around her heart as he is. He knows her dad was involved in Mitsuru's grandfather's research, and that's about it.

Besides, the question he wants to ask isn't a good one to drop in the middle of someone's meal, so he waits until her plate's clear (as much to make sure she doesn't want a refill as anything else) before he says, "How... how is she?"

Yukari sighs. "Still on support, but... well, you wouldn't appreciate sugar-coating, would you? I think Mitsuru's only keeping her on it long enough for everyone to come over. By the time we remembered to meet on the roof yesterday, she'd already lost consciousness, and thinking back she was _awfully_ tired all through February."

So Minako tried to meet with her friends out of sheer bloody-mindedness, huh. That sounds entirely like her, somehow. If he'd known, he might've tried to join them, or even beat them there (and probably made himself sicker), maybe finally tell her while she could still hear it... but what good would admitting to that heartache do now, of all times?

"Wake me up when you head back," he says.

"Are you sure? It probably won't be until this afternoon..."

Shinji nods. "I'm damn sure. Besides, with the memory gaps, the hospital missed something. Mitsuru would drag me back sooner or later. Might as well be on my terms."

***

Mitsuru won't let Shinji anywhere near Minako's room until he talks to the doctor who was in charge of his care. She always did try too hard to take care of him, even when he wasn't actively staying in the dorm - she managed to slip him money when he wasn't looking (and couldn't refuse it) more times than he can count.

_("I really don't know how Ekoda still has a job. Mitsuru-senpai all but crucified him for his part in what happened to Fuuka - he knew_ the whole time _that she was missing and never bothered telling anyone.")_

The news isn't as bad as he was afraid it might be. Turns out five months of doing nothing but sleeping did him _some_ good; he's never going to have the life span he might have if he hadn't started the suppressants in the first place, but he's not about to drop dead any second anymore, which is something. The doctor's pretty sure he can't summon his Persona anymore without the exertion killing him, but Shinji's all right with that. The Dark Hour's gone, so where would he even call it?

"The Dark Hour isn't the only place in which one can fight Shadows," Mitsuru says, when they head out of the exam room. "It's simply the one we had access to. Still... I'm glad you're with us again, Shinjiro. When things have calmed down, I'll help you figure out what you want to do next, and whatever it is, consider it paid for."

Shinji sighs. "I'd say you don't have to, but that ain't ever stopped you before."

"Nor will it this time." She knows without him saying that he had no plan for after high school - hell, he barely planned to finish it, considering he didn't really bother going for the last year.

"And what're you gonna do?"

"Get the Kirijo Group's good name back, and do my best to prevent Shadows from threatening others. I may not be able to stop everything, but someone needs to be on watch. It may as well be me."

Shinji nods; that sounds about right. And then suddenly, after what felt like an eternity, they're outside Minako's room and he's not sure he's ready for this after all. But he's run away from too much over the last two years. She wouldn't want him to start doing it again now.

"Shinjiro," Mitsuru says, before he can open the door. "How long did you know about Strega?"

"First time I talked to Chidori without Takaya there. You had enough to be guilty about, and I didn't figure even your dad would believe it if I said anything."

"...I suppose you're right. Go on. I'll wait out here."

Shinji steels himself with as deep a breath as he can manage, these days, and opens the door.

***

It's not right. She looks like a doll, unconscious on the hospital bed, hooked up to a bunch of machines doing her breathing for her. She's supposed to be happy and laughing and _alive_ , not... not this.

"You dumbass. What'd you go and do this to yourself for?" And naturally, that's when it occurs to Shinji that he _doesn't_ know what she did it for. He knows they ended the Dark Hour, but he doesn't actually know what the stakes were. He'll have to get the details out of someone later.

He really can't handle seeing her like this.

"Guess I'm not one to yell at somebody for takin' a risk they thought was worth it, huh. Never figured you'd go and turn the fuckin' tables on me." Shinji sighs. "You were supposed to be lookin' after everybody for me, not... the other way around."

_("Me? I'm not all that special."_

_"You been sittin' here for hours now, full of stories about everything you've been doin' for your friends, up to and includin' hijacking the damn PA system, and you think you're nothing special?"_

_And Minako looked right at him and said, "You don't think you're all that special either, senpai.")_

In one of those trashy American movies, this would be enough. She'd wake up and everything would be okay. But this isn't a movie, and Shinji stopped hoping for shit like that when Ken's mom died.

"You made what I thought was gonna be my last month alive worth living. And then you went and pulled this stunt. Don't you ever think you're nothin' special again, you got that?"

He can't bear to take her hand, not when she wouldn't grip back. He's intensely glad he's alone right now, for all he'd half wished Mitsuru would come in with him. He leans over and kisses her forehead - would she have allowed more, if only he hadn't been too goddamn chickenshit to ask? - and heads out without looking back. He'd rather remember Minako as she was, not as she's leaving the world.

At least Mitsuru doesn't say anything about him wiping his face with his coat sleeve.

***

When he gets home, he almost collapses in the lounge again - it's always had the best TV signal in the dorm - but decides against it. He needs answers, and of the two people here he trusts to give them to him with no bullshit, one's a lot easier to find than the other.

The real surprise, when he lets himself into Aki's room, is that it's half-packed, like he was expecting to leave the dorm any second but forgot about it or something. _No_ surprise, Aki's attacking his punching bag with the kind of laser focus that says he didn't even hear the door open.

"Thought you said you got over the Strongest Man in the World routine."

That startles Aki out of his routine; the punching bag swings around and nearly clocks him in the face. "Wha-- Shinji! Would it kill you to knock?"

"Your door ain't an elephant revolver, genius. I think I'll be okay." If Shinji can joke about Takaya's unnecessarily large gun, that's gotta be a good sign, right? In any case, it's enough to sober Aki up, and he flops on one side of his bed after grabbing some water and one of his damn protein shakes, waving a hand at the other side in an unspoken invitation he hardly needs after all these years.

_("Would you believe he thought I was dating Junpei, of all people?")_

Shinji sits down, trying not to give in and let himself collapse. "Went to the hospital."

Aki nods. "I haven't been able to bring myself to do that yet. Seeing you there was bad enough - don't you dare go getting yourself shot at again any time soon, you hear me?"

"Really don't think you gotta worry about that." At least, if anyone else wants to point a gun at Shinji, he doesn't know about it. "Anyway, realised while I was there that I don't actually know what the stakes were, other than gettin' rid of the Dark Hour. Weren't those big-ass Shadows supposed t'be tied to that?"

"That's what Ikutsuki told us, without anything to back it up other than 'there's evidence to support it.' Turned out he'd stretched the truth a little and used us as his minions to bring about the end of the world."

"...Well, shit." Shinji had never liked Ikutsuki that much, but he'd chalked it up to a lifelong distrust of authority types that only Mitsuru's dad had ever really overcome, and his goddamn never-ending stream of puns; he hadn't thought the guy was batshit insane.

On the other hand, it explains a lot about how Strega even became a thing.

"That's one word for it." Aki polishes off his protein shake with a scowl. "He and Kirijo-san shot each other - Mitsuru took it pretty hard, as you might imagine - and then we were given a choice between certain defeat and peaceful obliviousness to our pending doom."

"And you took certain defeat and stuck it where the sun don't shine."

"Damn right we did. We almost _didn't_ , but Minako... did something at the end of the battle, we're not sure what. None of us saw it, and the day after Tartarus fell we all forgot, until yesterday morning. We'd agreed to meet up on graduation day, in the hopes that it'd jog our memories."

Even if Yukari hadn't already said as much, Aki doesn't have to say that by the time it did, it was basically too late. Aki's fan club has always been as terrible at reading him as Aki is at reading them, but Shinji's known him since they were four. It's written all over his face.

"Explains why you're half packed up, I guess."

Aki nods. "Mitsuru said she's planning to move everyone out long enough to get rid of those cameras, and we do have college to get to, but... everyone else needs us, at least for a while longer."

"Yeah, well. No droppin' out of school to go on a manliness world tour or some shit like that, you got it?"

Aki punches Shinji's arm, but he's smiling.

Shinji dozes off on Aki's bed (something else that's happened on the regular since they were kids) and wakes up to an almighty crash from the kitchen; he sighs and heads downstairs to help Fuuka not make a complete fucking mess of dinner. She's trying stroganoff again, and is at least making new and different mistakes to the ones she made back in September. On her own, it might even have been edible this time, but he's not in the mood to chance it.

Minako really did her some good. She really did them all some good. It's not fair that she's gone, but the choice was hers to make.

Shinji's up all the way through to midnight again, but at least this time he's staring at the TV and not his bedroom ceiling. He doesn't really absorb anything from the shows, and he's still half expecting the TV to flicker off and the moonlight to go green. Maybe one of these days that gut reaction will fade, but it was his life for two and a half years; it won't go quietly.

Not long after midnight, there's a quiet clank at the foot of the stairs. "Ah. I hadn't realised you were still awake, Shinjiro-san."

Apparently Aigis learned how to be a little less formal somewhere in there. Good for her.

"Bet everyone is, they're just pretendin' otherwise."

"The Dark Hour has not re-occurred since January 31st, when we defeated Nyx, but I suppose the expectation that it would linger is difficult to suppress."

Shinji nods. "We got used to it. You didn't forget everything, huh?"

"I did not, no. It was... difficult, watching everyone else go about their lives without me, but I believed they would remember in due time." Aigis goes quiet for a while, then says, "I'm glad you returned to the dorm. I would like to say I missed you, but cannot accurately gauge my emotional state in October compared to now."

"Went and grew on you, did it? It's fine." He doesn't point out that the whole idea was that nobody would miss him; he's starting to realise it doesn't work like that, no matter how hard you try.

Neither of them say anything for a long time. There's some stupid infomercial on the TV; how this Tanaka guy hasn't gotten arrested for blatantly ripping people off yet, Shinji really doesn't know.

"She is not truly gone as long as we remember her," Aigis finally says - and somehow, it's exactly what Shinji needed to hear.

"You think so?"

"I know so, now. A rich life is one that touches others in a way they can treasure."

_("If you think it's so funny, you try having a robot hug you out of nowhere and declare you her highest priority sometime, see how awkward it makes you feel.")_

"Guess you got a point there."

"You should get some rest, Shinjiro-san. Your vital signs are better than they were in the fall, but still far from optimal."

So she doesn't have perfect understanding of human conversation, then. Good to know. With that, Aigis wanders off to do whatever it is she's been doing, and Shinji leans back in his chair - probably the same one he was sitting in when he kept Minako up half the night to tell him stories and pretend everything was gonna be normal. His hand goes to his watch, still in his coat pocket, and he considers not getting it fixed, even if Mitsuru can find someone to do it. He's carried worse reminders not to screw up again - those goddamn pills, for one.

He wouldn't have survived October if Minako hadn't gone out of her way to find the damn watch for him, and he sure as hell would never have looked at the police box, of all places. He wasn't supposed to outlive her, but he did - or will have, once everyone's said their goodbyes.

He owes it to her to make sure whatever time he's got now means something.


End file.
